Background
Scurfield is the son Helen Monsour and his adoptive father Thomas Edward Scurfield. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 3, 1943, but raised in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, about 16 miles outside of Pittsburgh. In 1961 Scurfield enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlise, Pennsylvania. While at Dickinson, he enrolled in Army ROTC. While at Dickinson College he decided that he wanted to become a social worker and he applied to Schools of Social Work. Upon graduation from Dickinson College in 1965 as a Dinguished Military Graduate, Scurfield was simultaneously commissioned in the Army Medical Service Corps. In the summer of 1965 Scurfield arrived in Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. This placed Scurfield right next to where the Watts riots happened. Scurfield has stated that this exposure to urban poverty and racism was a very important learning experience.
Scurfield spent four years in the Army, starting off as outpatient clinic social worker at William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas. Complaining about his duty assignment in El Paso, Scurfield was soon given orders for Vietnam. The Vietnam War was a turning point in his life; as a fresh 2nd LT and M.S.W., he was the only M.S.W. on a psychiatric team treating psychiatric casualties from I and II Corps of South Vietnam. This was the beginning of Scurfield’s real-life education about trauma and its powerful impact, and getting first-hand knowledge about the terrible consequences of policies and decisions made by our government and military when war is waged.
Read more about this topic: Raymond Monsour Scurfield
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